Putrid US politics

It is difficult to pinpoint the source of the miasma that currently pollutes the US, blighting society, politics and application of the law. Inhaled by a young president of whom significant national and international remedies had been expected, the fetid air appears all but to have incapacitated him. His foreign policy in both long-standing and recent Middle East conflicts is limp. America's rabid rightwingers, from which this stench largely may have emanated, appear nourished by it, while decent Americans are retching ineffectually. Putrid effluence from Republican politicians and from fascist-sounding TV pundits has added to the miasma and corrupted those responsible for the fair treatment of prisoners held in pre-trial custody, such as Bradley Manning (Report, 11 March), who has already spent 10 months in solitary – and mostly naked – confinement. Washington WC doesn't describe the half of it.